


now their hour is past

by kissedtheeaves



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Gen, Light Angst, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), i needed a way to process my feelings, there be spoilers here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-27
Updated: 2018-04-27
Packaged: 2019-04-28 16:35:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14453355
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kissedtheeaves/pseuds/kissedtheeaves
Summary: “The king is dead,” he says, and he smiles. This is a bitter sort of victory, that he is alone. “Long live the king.”





	now their hour is past

When he inhales, it is the scent of burning metal and copper. The breath leaves him.

A ragged gasp jerks through his throat and he smells sunlight and greenery. The ground beneath him is not the hard-edged rubble of the ship, and he cannot hear the broken-off pleas of his brother—

His eyes fly open and he sits up. He is in a field. He is in a field and he cannot find Thor anywhere.

He struggles to his feet, gaze jerking about, but there is only grass and wildflowers and open skies.

Perhaps a spell.

He calls power, summons a simple spell to find his way. The magic curls around his fingers, but the spell never takes shape. It cannot.

Because this place cannot be navigated. It is no place at all.

The revelation is a quiet one, the kind that cannot be refuted. There are no protests, no screams, no rage.

Loki is dead. And he is alone.

“The king is dead,” he says, and he smiles. This is a bitter sort of victory, that he is alone. “Long live the king.”

* * *

He is not alone for long.

Loki is not one to remain complacent, even in death. The fields of Valhalla are wide, and it takes nearly a full day before he finds another lost soul. She stands in the shadow of a tree, her silhouette shaky. At first, he thinks he sees a child; when he blinks, a woman’s form comes into shape. She looks toward him, and there is a naked grief written upon her face.

The woman looks at him, and her voice is thin with exhaustion. “I tried,” she says, then closes her eyes. “We tried.”

* * *

The assassin is only the first.

The others begin to appear in droves; they flicker into existence like the guttering of a candle. The moment a life is snuffed out, they appear in the fields. Not all of them, Loki knows. Valhalla is for warriors, but there are other places of rest.

A man with a missing arm who appears in mid-sentence; a woman with long auburn hair and haunted eyes; a prince who does not believe it, not at first; a child who cannot stop shaking for several hours; another man who appears not to believe his own death; and then the assassin’s own companions. He watches them reunite beneath the branches of a tree, sees the embraces that are half-desperation, half sobbing relief.

Thanos succeeded, they say. Everything has fallen apart.

And yet—Thor does not arrive.

Loki tries not to feel smug about this.

There are halls of feasting—that is where he finds Volstagg. The warrior goes still when he sees Loki, a turkey leg halfway to his mouth, before the food clatters to the plate. “Surprised?” says Loki dryly, as he sits across the table. He keeps his hands near the knives, just in case.

“To see you here?” says Volstagg. “Yes.”

There is a moment of uncomfortable silence, and then Volstagg reaches for a jug of spiced wine. He pours a good amount into a goblet and hands it to Loki. “I think I’d better hear this story,” he says.

There are others he knows, as well. Fandral and Hogun are found in a training room—Hogun practicing while Fandral smirks and offers the occasional encouraging word. They are equally surprised to see Loki, but they do a better job of hiding it.

Loki cannot truly blame them.

Valhalla is for those who die in battle. It is for warriors, for people like—

His mother.

She waits in one of the fields, and she is not surprised to see him. Her mouth curls into a familiar smile, and when she puts her arms around him, she smells just as she used to. “I knew I’d find you here,” she says.

He closes his eyes against the hot burn of tears.

* * *

Time passes oddly in the afterlife.

It is infinite, yet somehow not excruciatingly boring. Loki finds himself among his former enemies, and they accept him—after some time. It might be centuries or decades or mere days; Loki cannot tell. The story comes together in fragments, and Loki begins to see the shape of it. The mad titan who thought he was doing the universe a good deed by killing billions, the adopted daughter who tried to stop him, the avengers who fell in the ensuing battle. The man called Strange rarely speaks; he lets the others tell his story.

Loki seeks him out one evening; he is not sure, but some instinct drives him to it.

Loki’s lies were always twisted truths, honey-sweetened and easily swallowed. But he knows the other sort of lies—the kind that a person utters in complete silence, when the truth is swallowed and held in the chest.

“You’re not telling us everything,” he says, when he sees Strange. The sorcerer gives him a thin smile.

“I owe you nothing,” he says.

“Not even an explanation of why you gave over the stone?” Loki allows his voice to sharpen.

Strange laughs, but it sounds hollow. “You gave over a stone, as well,” he replies. “Why did you do it?”

There are many answers he could devise. That it was a calculated risk, that he knew Thanos wouldn’t spare a single person if there wasn’t something to bargain with, that—

That he could not bear to hear Thor’s screams.

He is not sure what makes him say it—perhaps because they are both dead and nothing truly matters.

“Because the cost was too high,” he says.

Strange nods. “You have your answer, then.”

* * *

When Thor comes to Valhalla, a storm comes with him.

Loki is practicing with Hogun—spear against knife, a whirl of action and movement that keeps his body active while his mind is at ease. There is little else to do but spar and eat and talk.

He hears the thunderclap, and the knives go still in his hands. He knows.

He does not run; here, he does not have to. The world blurs beneath his feet, and he sees his brother on one of the grassy hilltops. His hair is longer, and a raw scar stretches across his jaw.

He is smiling.

Loki finds himself before his brother. “Brother,” he says. To his relief, his voice is dry and slightly amused. “I hope you at least took out a few hundred of them.”

“I may have done a little better than that,” Thor says, and he laughs. It is a good laugh, the kind that rolls up from the belly. His hand lands on Loki’s shoulder and he squeezes hard. As if making sure that Loki is real.

“It’s lovely here,” he says, looking about the fields. “But then again, you did promise sunshine.”

Loki shakes his head. “Fool,” he says, but he says it fondly. “Come along. There’ll be others eager to see you.”


End file.
